Laptops For Less Blog

Cell-Phone Towers and Cell Phone Issues

Cell phone towers are usually steel poles or lattice structures that extend hundreds of feet into the air. Modern cell phone towers typically have more than one cell-phone provider sharing the same structure. [When you look at a towers base you'll find the provider’s equipment].

The box is the home of the radio transmitters and receivers. These radio transmitters and receivers allow the tower to communicate with cell-phones. The radios connect with the antenna on the structure through a set of very thick
cables.

When you look closely at a tower you’ll see that the tower, its cables, and its equipment at the base of the tower are grounded.

A sure sign that a cell-phone tower has multiple providers is a multiple latch set-up on the gate. This allows any one of the providers to unlock the gate to get in.

Cell Phone Issues

Like most all consumer electronics, cell phones come with plenty of problems. In this section, we’ll discuss some of the issues that cell phones face.

Here are some of the problems that a cell phone creates:

Non-repairable internal corrosion: This occurs when a phone gets wet, or you use wet hands to push the cell phone’s buttons. One easy way to prevent this is to use a protective case. If your phone does get wet, make sure that the phone is completely dry before switching it on. This could avoid damaging internal parts.

Extreme Weather: Extreme heat can damage a battery or the cell phone’s electronics. Extreme cold may cause a loss of the screen display.

Cloning: Analog cell phones have to deal with a problem called “cloning”. Someone steals a phones ID numbers, clones a phone using those numbers and is able to make fraudulent phone calls on the owner’s cell phone account.

Cloning works like this; when a cell phone makes a call it transmits the MIN and ESN to the network at the beginning of the phone call. The ESN/MIN pair is a unique tag for your phone. This unique tag is how the phone company knows who to bill for the call. When the phone transmits the unique MIN/ESN pair it’s possible for cyber criminals to listen [using a scanner] and capture the pair. If the criminal has the correct equipment it’s quite simple to modify another phone to contain your cell phone’s unique ESN/MIN pair. This allows them to make calls on your account.

Do you need a new cell phone battery? Be sure to buy a replacement cell phone battery from a reputable online merchant who sells cell phone batteries which are fully compatible with the manufacturers’ own brand replacements. LaptopsForLess.com has a huge selection of mobile phone batteries in stock, at very reasonable prices [often a fraction of the cost of manufacturers’ own brand replacements]. Brands stocked include: Audiovox, Ericsson, LG, Motorola, Nextel, Nokia, Samsung, Sprint, Sanyo and more…